I crossed Jameson Land with one of my dogs, Mikkey. We took the traditional winter 70 km musk-ox hunting route taken by Greenlandic hunters and their dog teams.

Jameson Land is a peninsula in east Greenland, bounded to the southwest by Scoresby Sund, the world's biggest fjord system. The nearest town is where I live, Ittoqqortoormiit, located to the south of the peninsula on Liverpool Land.

Long ago nomadic Inuit followed migratory patterns of caribou and musk-oxen. Both animals provided meat to eat and hides for clothing or skins for tents. For thousands of years this summer migration saw the Inuit pack loads on to their dogs. The Greenland Dog was brought into the country with the last major migration from Canada, the Thule Culture around 1100 AD. In all that time Greenland’s dog population is believed to have been totally isolated from the rest of the world.

The caribou don’t exist in this part of Greenland any more but the musk-oxen remain a crucial source of fresh meat for the community. Here they’re three seasons to hunt musk-ox, 10th November to 10th December, 10th August to 10th September and all of March. A single animal keeps me in meat for over a year. There are strict quotas, same too for polar bears. Bears can be hunted all year except August and September. Sows with cubs are strictly left alone. Cubs stay with their mother sometimes for three years.

I’d trained and conditioned Mikkey to carry his own pack. He’s capable of carrying a third of his own body weight. Mikkey carried his Nutrience Active dog food in his Ruff Wear pack.

I always travel with meat on trips and use an Excalibur dehydrator from UK Juicers. My friend Alison in England has one too. She’s very kind and buys fruit when it’s cheap or when it’s in season to pick it fresh. Alison makes great strawberry leather and a load came ashore off the boat.

You can do this with any fruit. Using frozen fruit is good since it’s already washed and without stalks.

Never trust a satellite phone. Sure enough handsets change but guaranteed reception does not. It remains dreadful, not very good if you want your life to depend on it. Well, since ACR Electronics, Inc. make the best personal location beacons available worldwide I carry my ACR MicrOFix at all times. I carried all the other gear I needed in a Lowe alpine Cerro Tore 95litre backpack. Everyone has favourites. Mine tend to be objects that help keep me alive, like clothing: specifically RAB’s Vapour-rise. It’s versatile, breathable, windproof and hardly ever off my back.

As ever, polar bears were always a threat. I packed a firearm and Mikkey acted as a vital deterrent against predatory bears while I slept through the light of the midnight sun.

We saw musk-ox herds grazing on moist summer meadows and snow bed vegetation. We were charged just once by a mean musk-ox and also saw lemmings, Arctic hares, Arctic foxes and gyr falcons. The gyr falcon is largest of all the falcon species and is an immensely powerful hunting bird. With a plumage ranging from white to black they hunt in a horizontal pursuit rather than the peregrine's speedy stuka-like plummit from a height. Gyr falcons force avian prey such as gulls and geese to the ground to kill them. I spotted a ptarmigan with her chicks before Mikkey and snapped a lead on his collar before making a life-saving detour for the brood. I wished them a falcon-free summer.

Rosker Ltd is one of the UK's leading distributors of outstanding outdoor and adventure equipment. Three of my favourite summer gear items from Rosker Ltd are Hanwag boots, the Seattle Sports Pocket Bucket and the Turbo Power Lighter from Primus. I need stability and sure footing for river crossings, else one slip and I’d be swimming. Hanwag boots with their Vibram soles give me that sure footing. The boot’s superb fit and comfort enabled me to concentrate on the terrain we were crossing and to watch out for the wildlife that has a tendency to eat people for food or fun.

The Seattle Sports Pocket Bucket is a collapsible 12-litre capacity water carrier that dries fast and scrunches down to zilch in my backpack. Ocean currents dictate that all driftwood on Greenland’s east coast originates from Siberia. The Turbo Power Lighter from Primus is as good as lighters get. They’re basically miniature acetylene torches. Average daytime summer temperatures rarely topped 10º C and our coastline open fires were good ones as we watched eider ducks bobbing or flying between icebergs. Mikkey’s favourite is his Ruff Wear Palisades Pack. Rosker Ltd distributes these too. Mikkey has tried other dog pack brands, enough not to be impressed.

Migratory birds are abundant at this time and I woke up to snow buntings and ringed plovers around camp. Other common birds I saw were Arctic terns, Arctic skuas and ravens. Vast numbers of geese were in the fertile valleys. And skulls.

My dogs have never seen trees. Dwarf willows and birch, none more than a couple of centimetres tall, grow interspersed with Arctic cotton.

Arctic vegetation creates a striking landscape of colours and the fragrance is gorgeous. Versions of their southern counterparts include moss campion, harebells, wintergreens, dandelions and Arctic poppies. Perhaps the most striking of all is the national flower of Greenland known as niviarsiaq, which means young maidens.

Most days Mikkey and I found fossils. Jameson Land contains some of the richest fossil plant deposits of the Triassic-Jurassic age in the world. Apparently it’s a region that could solve the mystery as to why dinosaurs were wiped out 200 million years ago.

My Greenlander friend Marius picked us up in his boat. I waded out with Mikkey on my shoulders and we all headed further into Scoresby Sund to Sydkap, an abandoned fur trading post.

Marius hunted seals and fished.

I hiked with Mikkey and began plans for a future journey from here.

When we arrived safely home Marius showed me the skull from a two tonne walrus his father Boas hunted earlier this year. Walrus are dangerous creatures. It’s terrible to pry a hunter from a walrus who has dug its tusks into a man’s back.